1. Field
The present invention relates to a liquid droplet discharge apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to ensure price competiveness in various industry fields such as semiconductors, displays, PCBs and solar cells, it is required to form a finer pattern in a low-cost process. In a photolithography process, a pattern is formed by depositing a material of a pattern desired to be formed on the entire surface and allowing light to illuminate the entire surface through a mask of the desired pattern. Unfortunately, the photolithography process has drawbacks such as process cost increases due to multiple processes, materials are excessively consumed, and waste increases. In order to solve the drawbacks of the photolithography process, there has been developed an inkjet process in which a pattern is formed by applying heat or mechanical pressure to discharge liquid droplets through a nozzle and a solvent is dried to allow only the necessary material to remain on a substrate. Disadvantageously, there is a drawback in that it is difficult to discharge fine liquid droplets of 10 μmm or less.
In order to overcome the limitations of the inkjet process, there has been developed an electrostatic type liquid droplet discharge technology utilizing a capillary. The electrostatic type liquid droplet discharge technology is a technology that applies a high voltage between the capillary and the substrate to discharge liquid droplets by an electrostatic force. Further, in the electrostatic type liquid droplet discharge technology, multiples nozzles are needed for mass production. However, in this technology of applying voltage to the nozzle to control discharge, when multiple nozzles are implemented, there is a problem of electrical conduction through an ink supply path.
In order to manufacture multiple nozzles, although a method of finely processing a silicon substrate has been introduced, since the nozzle made from silicon substrate has conductivity, an electric field is not concentrated on the ink within the nozzle. For this reason, since the intensity of the electric field is changed, a discharge voltage may increase or the nozzle may be clogged. Accordingly, there is a problem in that it is difficult to stably discharge the ink.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of an understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known to a person of ordinary skill in the art.